Newegg.com has launched a deal on select AMD Radeon HD 7000 series graphics card that allow you to save up to US $90 confirming the recent price drop that we have seen all across Europe.

The deal puts the Powercolor PCS+ AX7950 HD 7950 down to US $179.99 after US $30 rebate and with free shipping as well as MSI Radeon HD 7950 that can be bought for as low US $179.99 after $25 rebate. The cheapest HD 7970 graphics card comes from Sapphire and can be had for as low as US $279.99 after a US $20 rebate and with free shipping, while XFX has the cheapest HD 7970 GHz Edition for as low as US $319.99 after a US $30 rebate.

Retailers/e-tailers wants to clear the stock of AMD's Tahiti based HD 7970 and HD 7950 graphics cards as we will soon see some new versions based on the same chips, as well as some all-new graphics cards based on hot Volcanic Islands GPU.

Asus decided that CES 2013 is a perfect time to launch a new graphics card in its Republic of Gamers line of products, the ROG Ares II. Based on two HD 7970 GHz Edition GPUs and paired up with a dual water+air cooling, the Ares II features an impressive design and will certainly justify the premium ROG moniker.

Similar to the Ares I, which was based on two HD 5870 GPUs and the Nvidia equipped Mars (like the Mars II with two GTX 580 GPUs), the Ares II also features two factory overclocked HD 7970 GHz Edition GPUs for a total of 4096 stream processors (2048 per GPU). The new Ares II graphics card is pretty much what we have already seen from Powercolor and their Devil13 card, but with twist in the cooling department.

The new Ares II ended up working at 1050MHz for the GPU and 6.6GHz for 6GB (3GB per GPU) of GDDR5 memory. It requires three 8-pin PCI-Express power connectors and with 75W from the PCI-Express slot the total maximum power ends up at 525W. Asus opted for a 20-phase VRM that deals with the GPU and memory.

The cooling system on the new Ares II is something that we have not seen so far as it combines a closed-loop water cooling system with 120mm radiator and two push-pull fans with a standard 80mm air cooling on the card itself. Judging by the looks of it, the cooler on the graphics card will probably deal with the VRM and memory, while the water cooler will handle the GPUs.

As it was the case with previous Asus ROG graphics cards, the Ares II will also be a limited edition product with a total of 1,000 cards. The price or the actual release date have not been announced but it will not be cheap, that is sure.

Back on June 22, AMD officially paper-launched its new Radeon HD 7970 GHz Edition in order to put more pressure on Nvidia's GTX 680 graphics card. Back then, we wrote that it is indeed a press launch and that HD 7970 GHz Edition will not show its face in retail/e-tail until mid-July, if all goes well. Now it looks like all you need is a reference HD 7970 and a neat vBIOS hosted by Legitreviews.com and voila, you have your own HD 7970 GHz Edition.

The HD 7970 GHz Edition works at 1000MHz for the GPU and 1500MHz (6.0GHz effective) for memory with an addition of the new PowerTune Boost that allows the GPU to go up to 1050MHz within a certain power envelope. According to Legitreviews.com, it should work with all reference HD 7970 graphics cards. According to our info, PowerTune Boost should work, and should be available in CCC as well, if you are running on 12.7 beta drivers.

Nvidia's GTX 670 is clearly a thorn in AMD's eye and if the rumours from various sites are correct, AMD might have a remedy. Apparently, AMD is working on a new SKU that will be known as the Radeon HD 7950 GHz Edition.

Similar to the HD 7970 GHz Edition, the new HD 7950 GHz Edition will feature higher clock speeds and most likely AMD's new Boost PowerTune. Spec-wise, the HD 7950 GHz Edition will still feature 1792 stream processors, 112 TMUs and 32 ROPs paired up with 3GB of GDDR5 memory on a 384-bit wide memory interface.

AMD did the exactly same thing with its HD 7970 GHz Edition and it is expected that the HD 7950 GHz Edition will feature higher voltage with GPU clocks in excess of 1GHz, as the name implies. The new SKU is expected to go directly against the GTX 670 so it will be priced at somewhere between US $350-$400.

On the other hand, such SKU could get close to the standard HD 7970, so it is possible that AMD will phase them out before HD 7950 GHz comes up to market. According to reports, HD 7950 GHz Edition is expected to launch later this quarter and it appears that AMD's AIBs will have a green light to go with custom, non-reference designs from day one.

Although the Radeon HD 7970 GHz Edition has been officially launched by AMD, there has not been that many announcements from AMD's add-in-board (AIB) partners, and currently Club3D is the only partner that has officially announced such a card.

As we wrote earlier, AMD pulled of a press launch and Radeon HD 7970 GHz Edition cards are not scheduled to appear in retail/e-tail until early next month. According to our info, most partners will be focusing on custom HD 7970 GHz Edition graphics cards rather than going with AMD's reference design that tends to be a bit too noisy. Sources are telling us that Club3D and Sapphire could end up as only partners with reference designed HD 7970 GHz Edition cards.

As far as the Club3D's HD 7970 GHz Edition goes, it will hit retail/e-tail under CGHAX-7977SO model number and the only change is the Club3D's own sticker on top of the fan. The Tahiti XT2 chip is left to tick at reference 1000MHz with 1050MHz boost, and it feature 3GB of GDDR5 memory paired up with 384-bit memory interface and clocked at reference 6000MHz effective.

Unfortunately, Club3D did not announce any details regarding the price or the precise availability date but you can expect it to go for around US $499, depending on the region.

According to our sources, the AMD HD 7970 GHz Edition launch was a press launch only, as the retail launch is still a good two weeks away.

As you could have noticed, all of the reviewed HD 7970 GHz Edition graphics cards are based on AMD's reference design and only a couple of partners will actually go for such a card, while the rest will do a custom one. The custom design makes sense as the reference one is on the noisy side, and although the reference cooler is sometimes pretty good, custom solutions from various partners are usually better.

According to our info, partners will get HD 7970 GHz Edition GPUs in a couple of weeks so reference ones should start to appear in retail/e-tail in early July while custom cards will probably ship in mid-July and show up in retail in the latter half of the month, provided all goes well.

In case you got your eyes on the new Radeon HD 7970 GHz Edition, bear in mind that you'll have to wait for the next month to grab one. The cards have yet to be listed, so you cannot place preorders just yet.

AMD has unveiled its GTX 680 killer, or a card that should, at least in theory, be the GTX 680 killer, the HD 7970 GHz Edition.

Based on the same general specs as the original HD 7970, the AMD Radeon HD 7970 GHz Edition brings higher clocks and a new AMD PowerTune with Boost, a new way of making the card work at higher clocks by taking into account power consumption and temperatures. The new Radeon HD 7970 GHz Edition is, of course, still based on AMD's 28nm Graphics Core Next (GCN) architecture and features 2048 stream processors, 32 ROPs and 3072MB of GDDR5 memory paired up with a 384-bit memory interface.

The new Radeon HD 7970 GHz Edition works at 1000MHz for the GPU and 1500MHz (6.0GHz effective) for the mentioned 3GB of GDDR5 memory. The new Powertune takes the card as high as 1050MHz, as long as the temperatures and power consumption are below certain values and if those values are exceded, it simply downclocks the card back to 1000MHz.

As far as the benchmarks and various games are concerned, the HD 7970 GHz Edition generally beats the Geforce GTX 680 but as always, such a result comes at a price and with some tradeoffs. In the case of the HD 7970 GHz Edition, the drawbacks are translated into higher load power consumption and higher noise, although the latter will surely be fixed with custom coolers that some partners have already talked about. The ZeroCore tech still keeps the idle power consumption at a lowest possible mark, and does the job quite well.

According to some reviews around the net, the HD 7970 GHz Edition wins in some games and loses in others but mainly it is faster when pushed on higher resolutions which are clearly GTX 680's Achille's heel.

The launch price of US $499.99 is actually lower than the US $549.99 launch price of the original HD 7970, but back then, Nvidia was not around with its US $499.99 GTX 680. We can't shake the feeling that AMD is pulling an Nvidia-like move with its GHz Edition card, focusing solely on higher clocks in order to brutely claim the single GPU performance crown, with power consumption and noise emissions taking a back seat.

The tide is definitely changing and while Nvidia is now talking about power efficiency and performance-per-Watt, AMD is pushing its GPUs hard to take back the GPU crown. The fact that it can do so with a revamped six-month old GPU is impressive to say the least.

Most reviews agree on at least couple of things. The AMD HD 7970 GHz is a good and currently fastest single GPU graphics card that is definitely a nice refresh of the HD 7970 but with a higher load power consumption, loud cooler, and that US $499.99 price tag, the GTX 680 ends up to be a generally better card, at least if you do not plan on running multi-display setups. Of course, AMD is giving Nvidia a run for its money and competition is always good.

In an apparent effort to ruin Nvidia’s weekend, AMD has launched a revamped version of its flagship single-GPU graphics card, dubbed HD 7970 GHz edition.

As the name implies, the new card runs at 1GHz but that is not all. AMD also played around with the software side of things, so the PowerTune feature can now boost the clock to 1050MHz automatically, much like Nvidia’s GPU Boost feature.

The card still packs 3GB of memory, but it serves up 10 percent more bandwidth thanks to higher clocks (1500MHz/6Gbps).

Interestingly, the higher clocks did not result in higher power draw and the typical power draw is still 250W. According to early reviews, the new card has lower power consumption than the original HD 7970 in idle mode, but it draws quite a bit more juice under load.

The result of all this tinkering is impressive. The GHz edition outpaces the original HD 7970 by a wide margin, but more importantly it also beats Nvidia’s GTX 680 in quite a few tests.

Best of all, the price did not go sky high either. AMD is kindly asking $499 for the GHz edition, so it is cheaper than the original HD 7970 and on par with Nvidia’s GTX 680. To sum up, AMD has regained the high-end GPU crown both in terms of value and performance. What’s more, it managed to pull it off with a relatively old GPU design, as it is roughly half a generation ahead of Nvidia in terms of 28nm rollouts.

According to a post over at Atomicmps site, AMD has had its yields improve significantly and the company will launch the HD 7970 GHz Edition - a reference Tahiti XT-based graphics card that will run at beyond 1000MHz for the GPU.

Of course, some partners have jumped the gun and we have already seen some HD 7970 that are actually clocked higher than 1000MHz for the GPU, including the 1100MHz clocked Powercolor PCS+ HD 7970 Vortex IIandSapphire's HD 7970 Toxic, already seen during Cebit.

Of course, those were probably cherry picked samples but the current crop of AMD's Tahiti ES chips easily hit 1250MHz GPU clocks. The memory on HD 7970 GHz Edition cards should remain unchanged - 384-bit memory interface and 3GB of GDDR5 memory gives it a nice edge over the GTX 680.

The HD 7970 GHz Edition will of course go against Nvidia's GTX 680 and while it is still not clear if AMD plans to go over 1000MHz on reference cards, we are sure that partners will certainly follow with their own versions at some point in time.